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1.4.1-Pilferingapples
Brick!Club Les Miserables Bk. 1 Vol. 4 TO TRUST IS SOMETIMES TO SURRENDER Ch.1 One Mother Meets Another Or, FANTINE HAS THE WORST SOCIAL AWARENESS OH MY GOSH Fantine you poor darling, when you ask someone to watch your KID their first response should never ever be to start talking PRICES. There’s questions of age, and personality, and oh I am crying for Fantine again because she is so very alone in the world and it is so clear, she’s had no one to teach her to interpret other people and that innocence of her is based on isolation not choice and just OH NO it will ruin her to the end and it’s not her fault and she’ll never even understand what’s happening because she has no one to help her untangle this and she’s completely what she seems and FANTINE NOOOO I can’t take this today not today. …In less grief-inducing terms, well, geez, Hugo. I respect that us large gals ain’t your kink, but GEEZ. Also, dude, don’t harsh on other genres. You just said a toddler made you want to eat her cheeks. But I’m forgiving Hugo a lot here because we’re back in the realm of physical descriptions and I love those so much. The cart is a wonderful horrible thing, and I would have loved to play on it when I was a kid (of course I’m all Titanish and scary, so hey! it would appeal to my brutish nature. Ok maybe I’m not entirely forgiving the size-hate). And the kids are breaking my heart too, Eponine and Azlema even more than Cosette, because they’re so doomed; Cosette’s already had years more of a happy childhood than they will ever, because even if they’re spoiled and petted in the future there’s no real sense of security on any level with parents like the Thenardiers and I CANNOT HANDLE THIS CHAPTER TODAY, Brick!club I turn to your wits to find something beyond CRUSHING DESPAIR here. Commentary Malarkey-comes-in-bunches Oh gosh, agreeing with the whole being heartbroken by the introduction of Eponine and Azelma as these happy cute kids playing away and all the time I’m internally screaming “BUT I KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU IN THE FUTURE AND IT IS AWFUL.” Laissezferre I think aside from being too trusting, Fantine easily gave Cosette to the Thenardiers out of desperation. Poor girl was alone in the world, needed to work, had no one else to leave Cosette with, so when she sees two girls who seem to be growing up well, she bites. Eponine and Azelma playing was probably the first happy scene she’d seen in a while. She took what she could get. When I read Hugo’s descriptions on Thenardier/ess, I can’t help but laugh because his disdain for the character is so obvious. Then again, maybe physical ugliness/non-prettiness is Hugo’s way of hinting at a person’s character. Now that I think of it, his ugly characters do seem to be very flawed in general. Unfortunately, I can only add more despair to the discussion. Julie Rose’s title for this one is “to entrust is sometimes to abandon”, note “abandon”, not “surrender”. With surrender, you’d think it was talking about surrendering to fate or despair, but with abandon, you really get the sense that Fantine was technically abandoning her daughter. Speaking of abandon, washing of hands off responsibility was mentioned, and it kind of goes in line with Thenardier’s last words in the chapter (you’ve laid a trap using your daughters). He specificlly states “your” daughters, not “ours”. It’s made me reflect that Thenardier never really displays affection for any of his children, not even the older ones. I’m trying to think of the significance of the cart because carts do seem to pop up in the narrative quite often, be it carts as playgrounds or carts as spine-crushers. Gascon-en-exile The translation of the title of this livre is somewhat misleading in my opinion. The original is ”''Confier, c’est quelquefois livrer'',” a more exact translation of which would be something like “To entrust is sometimes to abandon” considering that’s what (unintentionally) happens here. No doubt someone knowledgeable about money in this period could have a field day with the figures here (and those in later Thénardier chapters, I’m sure), but aside from that the mercantilism of this scene - more comparable to modern daycares than to foster families - is appropriately appalling, as is the general grotesqueness of Madame and the wagon. Hugo definitely has a thing for making his significantly flawed characters ugly, though often with traits that might make them appealing if they weren’t so set off by the grotesque - Tholomyès is ostensibly intelligent (and, as noted here, goes on to become quite successful in the eyes of the world), Grantaire has his numerous random skillsets, and Mme. Thénardier…is a romantic at heart? She reads “''lectures romanesques''" (that is, trashy romance novels), is here singing what seems to be a chivalric love song, and as we later learn shares Fantine’s preference for giving daughters outlandishly elaborate names that would basically be unheard for were it not for this novel. That’s not that flattering, really - the modern equivalent would be like saying someone reads Twilight and agrees with Stephanie Meyer that Renesmee is a beautiful name and not at all weird - but I suppose it’s slightly humanizing? On an unrelated note, it’s curious that Mme. Thénardier being a redhead is from the Brick, because red hair among Francophones is fairly unusual. I know that a relatively recent fanon Thing is to make Feuilly a ginger, but this is one is Hugo’s so I guess it’s not completely off the wall. Kalevala-sage (reply to Gascon-en-exile) #Brick!Club, #TI.L4.C1, #Fantine, #Mme Thénardier, #Already sick of typing that accent mark,#But I’ll do it because I’m pretentious, #Also I referenced Twilight, #What is the world coming to?, Consider mapping your keyboard to U.S. International http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560 —it’s a minimally disruptive switch from QWERTY and allows for intuitive diacritical marking (and less-intuitive non-diacritical markings like å and ø, but you’re probably not that interested in Scandinavian stuff). It’s also titillatingly pretentious when your keyboard bashes look like ýsüdaßðfèôsfjðß. This has been a Public Service Announcement. Also yes, you referenced Twilight. You’ve also previously brought up True Blood in conversation and are never living that down, and now the entire Internet knows, because this has been a Public Service Announcement. Pilferingapples (reply to Gascon-en-exile) I think if anything the romantic novel thing is meant to explain why this “giantess” is so cowed by her husband- she’s trying to live a romance, with maybe the worst partner in the world for it. So she (and her husband!) stand out to me as being grotesque without ‘redemptive’ traits, just slightly humanizing ones. I do wonder why these two fairly powerless people (no status, generally no money…) were chosen as the most persistently antagonistic characters besides maybe Javert?